* Adam met us at the vet's. I won't go through all of the horrible wrenching sobs. What I will say is that we gave him hugs and final scritches from everyone, with the last and biggest hug from Elayna, who's in Florida this week.

* The vet confirmed in detail that there was absolutely no way at all that Jack could live. Massively metastasized cancer; it was probably too late when he first showed signs of Something Wrong. I will not list some of the reasons the vets know there was no chance, because some are so horrifying that the sentences are running in a constantly-escalating loop in my head, and they don't have to be in yours. Just - our decision was right. It was the only possible decision.

* (I'd wanted to push for the ultrasound earlier. As it turns out, that would not have saved him, but it would have saved him some of the pain. Next time I will trust myself more and be more aggressive.)

* (The ultrasound was $340; it was worth it to know for absolute certain that we were doing the right thing. The euthanasia and cremation are $210, I think the tech said. They're letting us pay for that later. Which is good, because we couldn't have right now.)

* Adam and Judah and I were there for him at the end. We petted and kissed him and told him what a very good boy he had always been.

* He went instantly. Almost as soon as the butterfly needle went in, he laid his head down and left. He was so ready to go.

* I couldn't bear to leave his body in the room. I had to go back and cry again.

* I have never done this before. I haven't had a pet die since I was ten.

* When we go home, we cleaned. Judah took the lead, because I can't stand the smell of the floor-cleaning stuff; Jack had lost bladder and bowel control the last few days, and my bedroom and office, his sickrooms, reeked and were streaked with his fluids and semisolids. I cleaned up syringes, fluid bags, amoxicillin, painkillers, and Judah swept, mopped, scrubbed. I don't know if the duvet is destroyed; I'll run it through the washer a few times today. Saturday, we will paint my bedroom. We will transform it into not-Jack's-sickroom.

* Adam and Judah played video games in separate rooms. I curled up on the couch. Adam wrote a post. Judah wrote a poem.

* The other cats haven't reacted because Jack has been sequestered this whole time; they're used to not seeing him.

* There is a Jack-shaped hole in the world, and none of us yet really understand how to live around that hole.

"...part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time."~~"Case of You", Joni Mitchell

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." ~~"Anthem", Leonard Cohen

"If you wanna be immortal, you gotta have something to trade in." ~~"Anything", Foetus

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."~~George Bernard Shaw

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."~~Terence McKenna

"When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other."~~Rob Sheffield

"I have a sickness in the brain. I'm allowed to make no sense to you puny mortals with your fully operational head-meat."~~Spider Jerusalem

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."~~Lois McMaster Bujold

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."~~Albert Camus

"Being able to speak the unspeakable is very powerful. If we can hear another person express where they get stuck, or lost, or repeat a negative pattern, it builds a bridge."~~SARK

"Myths and legends die hard in America."~~Hunter S. Thompson

"Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible."~~Edwin Land

"Having faced the fire of your initiation and survived its heat, you can now serve others in a whole new way. By being a living testimony to life transformed, you carry in your cells a sacred knowledge, and in your mind and heart a sacred fire. It's not the fire of youth but the fire of Prometheus, who emerged with the light that would light the world. It's a light that you only could have gotten from having faced some version of your personal hell, and now you are inoculated to the fires which rage around us. Sometimes it is fire that puts out fire, and such is the fire that now burns in you. This is not the fire of your destruction but of your victory. It is the fire of the middle years."~~Marianne Williamson

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed…what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealously among the prime themes of literature."~~Virginia Woolf

"The Universe puts us in places were we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are is the right place, at the right time. The pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born."

"I will tell you a great secret, Captain, perhaps the greatest secret of all time: The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside - that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe requires a change of perspective."~~Delenn, Babylon 5

I am kenning all I canShe and I, me and my mind,Writing hard for the one true thingThat lets you let me inBeguiling what must to gain the trust of the minutemenI am worth investing inand I never stop spinning.

Kenning yarns out of my skinWith a leaky borrowed penSwirling stars and stories inWill you let the light leak in?